[yoyar]

People with higher incomes give more to charity. People with more disposable income give more to charity. Government "charity" consumes about 70 percent of the money in bureaucratic overhead. Private charity overheads are typically below 30 percent, and much better in many cases. What you want is more money in the pockets of people so that they can give more to charity. Any dollar spent on voluntary charity vs taxes is much more efficiently used to help the needy directly. If you really care about poor people you should want more money going directly to private charities not the government. In fact, private charities were a much bigger part of day to day society before the welfare state and poverty was decreasing between the 40s and 60s. When the government steps in it changes people's behaviour and takes away more and more of their disposable income. I know you'll find this hard to believe but its true the richest in our society give more than anyone else to charity.

[vacri]

Government welfare gets money to all locations over the long term. Private charity does well in short, acute phases (eg hurricane relief), but over the long term, it's only useful for socially attractive services - and even then, it's not enough. 'kids with cancer' charities do a lot better than 'young adults with mental illness' charities, which in turn do better than 'disabled people who need 24-hour care for life' charities.

> poverty was decreasing between the 40s and 60s

... something which had little do to with welfare or private charity.

> I know you'll find this hard to believe but its true the richest in our society give more than anyone else to charity.

I don't find it hard to believe at all. What you're finding hard to believe is that even though the rich give more than others, it's still a drop in the bucket compared to government-supplied assistance.

[cmacpher]

intuitively people with higher incomes should more to charity. However, a recent study found the rich DO NOT give a higher proportion of their income to charity. Incomes of $25,000 or less a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent of their incomes; those with earnings of more than $75,000 gave away 2.7 percent.

There are certainly a number of things that could explain this.